


just sleep to wake

by beforeallthis



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Family, Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 20:57:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6582154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beforeallthis/pseuds/beforeallthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s nothing wrong with wanting company. With wanting family, she tells herself. I have people now. It doesn’t feel real, but they are out there and she yearns for them. For family. For her family.</p><p>She doesn't believe in psychic senses but she knows that the world is spinning right now, going on, and in the depths of her soul she knows they made it out. Her family.</p><p>// Some 'exploration' into Michonne's thoughts and her PTSD. Based in and on S04E09 - After.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just sleep to wake

“Hallelujah.”

She pulls out a kitchen knife – no, a katana. It glints once in the sunlight, catching her dark eyes before the light vanishes from the room as a dark cloud looms over the city, consuming it as it rumbles past. Michonne smiles either way, listening to the debate go on. Wiping the blade in front of her with a towel, she hears the pitter-patter of small bare feet scuttling down the hallway. It feels like she has not stopped smiling since she found herself in this kitchen - whenever that was - in the company of Mike, Terry and her absolute sunshine and bundle of light, even as the thunderstorm gets louder.

She slots the katana back with the rest of the blades and lifts up her son. He smiles at her, grabbing at one her locks, and she feels her heart about to burst. In fact, that's all he makes her feel. Joy. She is so happy she could die in this moment - if we could discern what this moment was. She grabs the tray in front of her and saunters to the table, Andre bouncing on her hip, holding on as hard as he can to her hair.

“Well, what is the damn question, Mike?!” Terry's voice rings out against the walls; the thunder is closer now.

Michonne is smiling and Andre is giggling. She feels weightless; can’t seem to feel the ground, only Andre’s body in her arms. And she never believed in psychic senses or gut feelings - not at this point in time anyway - but she swears that the world has stopped spinning, like everything and everyone is waiting for something. But all she can do is smile, oblivious and uncaring. 

“Now, I have a question,” she sets the tray down in front them, "Who's gonna open the wine?" And as she looks up she feels all the blood rush out of her head. She stops smiling and she can already feel a clamoring in her throat and the burn behind her eyelids.

She’s found the ground and it hurts. She can't feel a thing but, goddamn, everything hurts all the same.

“No.”

Mike and Terry look at her, all guts and gore. Their jaws are gone and blood drips on the table. They do not move but their eyes are on her, glaring, accusing. Her mind works quick but not quick enough. There is no grip on her hair; Andre is not in her arms anymore. 

“No.”

She panics, looks around, steps back – she feels like she’s falling but she hasn’t landed. The tears spill and she feels the life vanish from her body. _Nonononono_.

She screams and braces herself for the landing.

* * *

 

Michonne wakes up, fighting for breath in the confines of the car she found last night. Her eyes struggle to gain focus, her ears catching the noise of chains rattling together and the faint moans of the walkers on the end of each one. She finds air and inhales, remembers to exhale, too. She shuts her eyes for a second or two, but doesn’t dare keep them closed any longer - she needs to see the light and see what's real, no matter how horrible it is. Still better than this same damn dream, over and over again, haunting her. Cold sweat drips down her face. So cold.

It doesn’t change, hasn’t changed since she first started seeing it. After the camp, it felt like days on end were just spent walking, too numb to cry and too horrified to even sleep. Mike and Terry were morbid company, looking at her through white, cloudy eyes. Glaring. Accusing. When she finally collapsed from exhaustion, it didn't last - her voice broke through the forest at the dead of night and she cried for hours.  _Andre._ And so her punishment began. And so, it doesn't change. Not one iota. In the prison, it stopped pestering her so often. But now it didn’t feel like a dream, it just felt like her brain played it on loop wherever she went - a constant reminder with no moments of respite. It keeps her moving, keeps her running, with no end destination in sight. 

But since the prison, she's been almost as tired as that day she went back to the camp...

Michonne gets up, grabs her katana and winces. Breathes. Tugs on the chains and makes her way (again).

* * *

 

She looks at the stacks of chairs and tables, the dead walker on the floor. A gruesome scar on his head, but there’s also a bullet hole. She doesn’t have the facts – just a dead walker and a dream she’s running from, and a dream she’s running to – but she feels it in the pit of her stomach, that they were here. People were here. In her head, she’s hoping it was anyone from the prison. In her heart, she prays and knows that it was Rick. Carl and Judith, if he found them. Her heart pangs, and her head follows telling her to chase them. She mulls it over.

“Mike.”

She mulls it over. There’s nothing wrong with wanting company. With wanting family, she tells herself. I have people now. It doesn’t feel real, but they are out there and they are _so real_ and she yearns for them. For family. She doesn't believe in psychic senses but she knows that the world is spinning and in the depths of her soul she knows they made it out.

She slides down a wall and sits on the floor, covered in walker guts and blood. She mulls it over - no, she knows what she's going to do.

“I’m still here.”

_I will not sleep another night alone out here. Goddamn._

* * *

 

She walks up to a house - no, _the_  house. She knows. There’s no hard evidence except a dead walker and an empty chocolate pudding tin – and then of course there’s the beating of her heart, racing and racing as she walks to the window and the churning of her gut as she followed the tracks into this suburb. Peering in, she can hear the blood rushing in her ears.

Doubting herself even as she sees them sitting on the floor, looking like death, the both of them, but very much alive if her mind isn’t playing tricks on her, she smiles - dream or not, this is good. She doesn't get much further. Before she can think, she’s trembling and crying, but she does not stop smiling.

_I’m still here._

_And you could be, too._

Praying for one more day, one more minute - _I think I'd even do it for a second -_ with the people she loves, with the people who  _love her_ , for one nightmare to end – it’ll make room for a new one, but for now, she is at peace. Her tears fall onto her vest, she inhales and doesn't need to remember to exhale; dragging her fingers across her cheeks and letting the tears fall free, she knocks.

* * *

 

She puts the katana down and picks up Andre, her bundle of joy.

She is weightless but she can see her bare feet on the ground. There is no tray for her to pick up. The sun is still bathing the room and she can’t hear Mike or Terry as she steps to the window. Andre laughs and she rocks him. There is no dark cloud - no thunder. Just her smile, Andre on her hip and his soft tugging at her hair.

In the reflection of the window, she sees Rick behind her, looking at her. Carl is standing like she is, bobbing Judith on his hip - Judith and Andre laugh in harmony, ringing against the walls. Michonne smiles and Rick smiles back in the reflection of the window. Andre tugs, and she closes her eyes to the red of her eyelids scorched by the sun pouring in.

She wakes up.

There is no cold sweat; no screaming and no fight for oxygen. The sun doesn't let her get into focus, but she doesn't mind it. Rising up off the couch, she sees Rick standing in the doorway. She's still covered in walker guts and blood, slept in it, she slept all the same. In peace, for the first time in such a long _goddamn_ time. Rick smiles at her. 

"Good morning," he wheezes, looking like death but he's glowing in the sunlight. He hands her a clean white shirt just as Carl comes downstairs holding a comic book in his hand.

_I'm still here._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not very good at writing but I love Michonne and I'm also procrastinating and missing The Walking Dead and parched for Richonne. I just love the Grimes family dynamic so much which she is most definitely a part of (like as early as season 4?? I'm dead). Then I heard Softly Draining Seas and just wrote this. I love Michonne. Did I mention that already?
> 
> "You sleep to wake  
> And I don't care what still remains  
> And in my brain I create  
> This peace and filter I call fate  
> Too soon to wait."


End file.
